Battery Integrated Modular Multilevel Converter Topologies for Automotive Applications

Abstract

Electric vehicles are rapidly developing in response to the need for increasing sustainable energy sources. The range and lifetime of an electric vehicle are limited by the battery pack. A pack comprises modules with several parallel and/or series-connected cells. Differences in leakage currents and cell in-homogeneities cause individual cell voltage and state-of-charge distribution among the cells to be non-homogeneous. As a result, over time, some cells discharge faster than other cells, thus limiting the total energy delivered by the pack. In order to maximize the energy delivered by the pack, individual cell control is desirable. As a solution, battery-integrated modular multi-level converter (BI-MMC) topologies are proposed, presented, and evaluated. BI-MMC topology consists of either one or two arms per phase, and each arm comprises several cascaded stages of DC–AC converters and is commonly referred to as submodules. BI-MMCs provide increased controllability and potential improvement in the lifetime of the battery pack. Furthermore, BI-MMCs have low output total harmonic distortion, further improving the powertrain efficiency. The first contribution is the design and evaluation of 3-phase and 6-phase BI-MMCs; comparisons are made against a conventional 2-level inverter for a 40-ton 400 kW commercial vehicle. The evaluation considers the total number of submodules, energy rating of the DC-link capacitors, battery losses, capacitor losses, and semiconductor losses. The evaluation showed that the BI-MMCs have lower semiconductor losses than the conventional 2-level inverter. However, the BI-MMCs have higher capacitor and battery losses. The second contribution is the investigation of the impact that the number of series connected cells per submodule has on the total losses of the BI-MMC. The study showed that 5-to 6-series connected cells have the lowest losses. The third contribution is the design principles for optimization of the DC-link capacitors and the MOSFET switching frequency; this is supported by experimental validation for the loss distribution within a submodule. The fourth contribution is a methodology for determining the battery impedance using the full-load converter current. In a conventional battery pack, the battery is connected directly to